Bomb-Ass Banana Bread

I'm not going to lie: I was pretty impressed when I took a bunch of over-ripe-to-the-point-of-being-garbage bananas and turned them into a delicious bread. (Thanks to the good folks at Radford for being my witnesses!) Best of all, this recipe is wheat-free!

I modified a recipe I found in the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook so shouts to them.

Here's what you'll need:

3/4 cup of quinoa flour
3/4 cup of Pamela's Baking mix
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 egg
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup mashed bananas
1/4 cup olive oil
(optional) 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1. Preheat your oven to 350. Grease a 8X4X2 loaf pan (use technique #2 in the post below: butter or Pam with confectioners sugar) & set it aside. In a big bowl, combine your dry ingredients excluding the walnuts. Make a well in the center of the dry mixture and set aside.

2. In medium bowl, combine the egg, bananas, sugar, and oil. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones all at once and stir ONLY until moistened. The batter is going to be lumpy and that's okay. Fold in the walnuts if you'd like 'em.

3. Put the batter in the pan and bake for 50 - 55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on the rack.

Two helpful hints to add:

1. Use super over-ripe bananas. You'll know they're ready when they're deep brown or black. They nearly fell apart when I mashed them but I took it one step further and whipped them up in the KitchenAid® stand-up mixer. If you're not rockin' the KitchenAid®, use a hand mixer.

2. At 50 minutes, the top of my bread was looking over done so I covered it with foil and kept it on for the rest of the cooking time and overnight. That trapped even more moisture in and seemed to make the bread that much more scrumptious.


Get some bananas and get a-bakin'! Enjoy!